


Side Bets and Selfishness

by amberite



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Zelazny
Genre: Cliche, First Time, Frenemies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberite/pseuds/amberite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you can't get into your best frenemy's head, maybe it's best to try getting into his pants. A scene that never happened, taking place in the crystal cave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Bets and Selfishness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annakas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annakas/gifts).



Nothing like weeks shut up in a big blue crystal cave, eating canned food and ready rations, to make you think.

I'd gone over the events that landed me here so many times I was starting to manufacture details, and that's never good. Plus, I couldn't affect a thing from here. For all I knew, the whole situation had changed radically since the last time I'd spoken to anyone.

Julia's death, the trapped trumps, Ghostwheel on his little power trip – well, that last was as much Random's fault as mine, I thought privately, suggesting to my device how he might best weaponize himself – and that mysterious progression of people trying to save me, all of whose conversational styles seemed inextricably linked together. So running out of things to think about was hardly an issue.

Still, there was a distinct scarcity of productive moves. As such, my thoughts turned and meandered like the loops of the Pattern, except with no magical transportation mechanism in the middle.

No, in the middle of those loops was Luke. Rinaldo. I kept coming back to him, turning and turning. My mirror, my betrayer. The red hair and sideways grin that I felt I somehow should have interpreted earlier, drawn the conclusions Fiona had drawn and not seen fit to tell me. (Of course, when people don't see fit to give you their information, you can hardly be blamed for extrapolating from that which you lack. Garbage in, garbage out.)

I kept thinking of him and of what I could have done differently. I thought I might love him, sometimes. It wasn't that strange of a thing; we were only cousins, after all. Other times I wasn't sure, and other times than that I wanted to kill him.

I dreamt more than once of that last footrace between us – but in the dream, we were running towards something that slipped out of reach just as we approached it, and I couldn't tell who was winning. Maybe we were tied. Maybe the race didn't matter so much as the thing we were trying to catch. But it was clear that the approach wasn't working, because the thing always got away, and I never remembered what it was when I got up.

And then I woke one day and he was there – my cousin, my enemy, my friend, reclining on the cave floor with a flask in hand. He had his boots off, and his clothes were dusty, like he'd been scrapping with someone.

"Hi, Luke. Come on in," I said. "Have an MRE. I hear the steak with mashed potatoes is particularly good this time of year. Hell, any time of year."

He bit his lip and for a rare moment looked serious. "Hey, Merle. Calm down. You know this wasn't my first choice for you."

"First by chronology or by preference? Because if you're going in chronological order, I think I prefer these digs to a burial."

"There were reasons why I was trying to kill you – and reasons why I'm not now."

"So I gather," I said. "I'm glad you found the latter more compelling. Why are you here?"

He shrugged. "Need a place to lie low, and I mostly believe you wouldn't try to kill me."

"Only mostly, huh?"

Luke sighed. "The other part of me believes that if you tried, I might deserve it." He drained the flask, capped it and shoved it in a pocket.

"I never figured you for the type to have a death wish."

"Well, all of me is certain you wouldn't succeed – not here, at any rate, without the benefit of sendings."

I had my own private opinions on the matter, but I held them private. I shook my head, and walked over to the pantry piles to fetch a bottle of wine. Better to talk to a drunken man on drunken terms. That, and a more drunken man would probably be more useful to me right about now. I popped the cork and poured myself a tall glass; poured him one, too, and hoped I could get his guard down thereby. He accepted it, but didn't drink too fast.

"What have you been doing, anyway, that you need to be lying low?"

"Not on offer," he said, but there was a grim look on his face.

I shrugged. I didn't think it would be that easy anyway. "It still surprises me that you'd come back here just for a visit. So I have to think it's not just to hide out, and that there's something you want from me."

Luke took a larger gulp of wine. "Think what you like. Isn't there always something we want from each other? I think it's definitional to these kinds of things."

"It is," I said. On a hunch, then: "Knowing what you want seems to be trickier. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not your strong suit. You never did say _what_ your first choice for me would be, just that this here isn't it." I gestured at the environs. I expected a slick comeback, but didn't hear one. Not wanting to wait for it, I continued. "In fact, I'm not sure you know what you want at all."

That got him smugly grinning again, and that told me he did know, and just wasn't saying. A common state of affairs for us.

"Make a guess," he said. "I'm not trying to recruit you for an Earth computer company, though."

"Or get me to kill my relatives?"

He quit the glib talk and I could see something weighing heavy on him in the crease of his brow – a duty none of us wanted him to have. Maybe I could get him to cast it off. At least I could try.

"When was the last time you did something you wanted to, Rinaldo?" I used his real name on purpose, yanked the string I barely had any hold on.

Silence as only caves hold silence, an echoing noise of nothing.

"I came here, didn't I?" he said. "And drank this wine." His glass was empty. I filled it again. He gave it a long stare, like he hadn't expected to get to the bottom; it was twice the size of a normal glass.

"So you came here because you wanted to," I said, "not because you needed to." Mandor would be proud at my inference.

"Hey, I never said the two were at cross purposes."

"When aren't they, with you?"

"Not fair play, Merle. Or did you sleep with the girl from the bar strictly for investigative reasons? Cut out the digging."

"How do you know about that?" He meant Meg Devlin, or whoever she really was – the one who'd known my parents' names.

"I have my sources." Luke gave the glass of wine a speculative look and started in on that one. "Aw, hell. Do you ever feel like you're chasing yourself around in circles and never succeeding at anything but complicating matters?"

"What kind of a question is that? Of course I do. I think we both spent years doing that. After you stopped trying to kill me, I mean."

"Fine," he said, "Fine." He stood up, not really wavering – we talk drunk long before we lose our balance – and reached for me.

I tensed, ready to throw him off, to start brawling, but it wasn't a headlock, it was an embrace. His lips met mine roughly, tasting of strong drink, and I thought he was every bit as interesting as he'd been when he wasn't in the room and all I could do was pace and obsess. "Shit," I breathed, "this whole time, you –"

"Well, not the whole time. There were those first few years –"

He pulled me to the floor, or maybe I pulled him. We did away with clothing. Subject verbed object. I strove against him in a sweaty, exhilarating kind of competition we had not enjoyed with each other before. I cannot say who won the wrestling match, exactly, but we were both winded by the end and lay back to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

At least I did. He did for a while - then tried to slip away; I grabbed his arm. "You think you're going to get a head start on me, and ditch me in here again? Not a good bet, old friend."

Before he could start, I pinned him to the ground bodily. He was not entirely worn out from our exertions, because when my body pressed against him I felt him hardening, ready for another round. I felt my own parts react in exquisite agreement. We do have a lot of stamina. I rocked against him, and he gasped with surprise or lust or both. "Oh, hell, Merle," he said.

So I reached down and took his piece firmly in hand. Then I said over his sudden groan, "Really, would you leave just now?"

He growled and rolled me over, and I thought for a moment he was going to pull away and try to exit the cave leaving yours truly behind. Sex can be a treacherous business. But that was not what happened. His mouth found me then, warm and devious, and I invented some interesting profanities to tell the blue ceiling.

Part of my mind thought he might try to make a break for it later, but I couldn't bring myself to call a halt to the proceedings. Maybe a selfish, short-term decision on my part: still, dalliances can turn into alliances. And even if I didn't make it out of the cave today, I knew he'd be back, and I wouldn't be bored.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to style-match Zelazny to some large extent, although I also played fast and loose with it in places. Mostly, I tried to create something sexy and fun - hope you like it!


End file.
